Hi all!
I'm looking to engage Experian to do a data cleanse of our constituent addresses and emails here at Australian Museum. We implemented Tessi a year ago and we know the quality of the data we imported, as well as all the new data created since then, is not fantastic. We didn't have time to clean it properly before implementation so we always had a cleanse on the radar.
Has anyone used Experian or anyone else for such a service? Just wondering what your experience was like. Would appreciate any feedback.
Thanks so much!
Hi Tash,
At previous job, we looked at doing this and got Experian to analyse how dirty and out of date our data was. What stopped us from getting them to update/clean the data was that we would have to export all of our constituent data to send them and then they would send us back the clean data which we would have to import creating a lot of duplicates that we would have to merge. This was a few years ago though, so it’s possible this wouldn’t be the case anymore? In my current job though I’m also dealing with a lot of dirty data so I’m also keen to see if anyone has engaged Experian or someone else and how it went.
Cheers,
Courtney
Courtney Percy (She/Her)
Database & Ticketing Manager
The Wheeler Centre
176 Little Lonsdale St. Melbourne
P: 03 9094 7815
E: courtney.percy@wheelercentre.com
www.wheelercentre.com
We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we live and work, the Wurundjeri Woi- Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. We pay respects to their elders past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Courtney Percy said:we would have to export all of our constituent data to send them and then they would send us back the clean data which we would have to import
I'm stunned that this would be acceptable to any Experian customer. Terrible, in multiple ways.
We use Experian in 2 ways within Tessitura. We have a 'batch tool' and the rapid address tool. Both work to help keep addresses up to scratch. We haven't used the email tool as yet.
Batch allows you to run batches of data through the system, formatting addresses as you like, from a CSV file. There is a process - those that match are up dated without interaction from the user & those that sort of match that a user will work through by eye balling the match the tool has made & updating or confirming or if you can't match it, ignoring that record. We do this before importing any data into Tessitura, but you could also export your addresses & batch clean then & then re-import into Tessitura using the NCOA process from Tessitura https://www.tessituranetwork.com/Help_System_v151h/Tessitura.htm#NCOA_Processing/Using%20the%20NCOA%20Processing.htm?Highlight=ncoa
You could also use the NCOA process to send them the data & then reimport it back after washing / cleaning.
Rapid address allows you to update the address during data entry of the record, which makes things faster for the users as well.
That said the amount of records that come in via the web is much more these days & it would be nice if the tool could be deployed there, which technically it can be, but the user experience with this tool & TNEW was less than ideal in our opinion anyway....it was not 'the ideal' of start typing your address & then it's matched, populated into the account registration form. I have my finger crossed that this is on the very near future - it seems to be on so many websites now.
The other thing that is annoying - each country is it's own dataset and therefore is licensed separately. Because of this we have New Zealand licenses only. It's not cheap.
Good luck!
We use Experian to perform a quarterly NCOA of our database. We only send them only selected records that have recent activity using a broad definition of recent. You don't want to pay for deceased or those who have opted opt of mailings Using the NCOA Processing utility in Tessitura, it is a relatively simple process and it updates the changed records and format records to US postal standards. It works for us and have no issues with Experian .
Hey Tash,
I was talking to our bud Claudia Rowe yesterday and remembered this.
One specific issue I had with Experian when cleaning email records was the advice not to use Unreachable email classification. When I did a throughout audit on their results I discovered that quite a few whole domains (email service providers), and uni/government email was classified as unreachable, when we had recent activity including click throughs and purchases from them. When I pushed them they admitted that "iinet has commonly been flagged as unknown because of the fact that the domain exchange is set to an “acceptAll” which falls under our unknown category – this means it will accept all requests to be made to the domain but will not provide a validation response. This is not an issue rather an expectation which the domain has implemented to prevents any checks to be made, regardless of the fact that it is either a correct/valid email or not. You will find email domains from government, tertiary education domains and large corporation are inclusive within this category, there is no way around this."
The frustrating thing, which I mentioned to them, was that they knew that those domains were untestable yet tested them anyway and advised us to deactivate them without any disclosure of that knowledge passed onto us so that we could filter them out.
It's something I'm going to bring up with their new rep, as they've started their sales pitch again.
Cheers,Heath